white_migraine

Having removed the fee to reset attributes in GW more than half a decade ago, attaching a fee to the reset of traits here seems like a step backwards.

joea64, on 25 July 2012 - 12:16 AM, said:

respectfully disagree.  surely they are more worthy than finding waypoints or other static points of interest.
and most vistas are very simple....usually there is only one or two per map that take thought or skill (minimal) to complete.  i think they are aciually necessary to make map completion of cities even worthy of being considered an accomplishment (and nearly all of them are cool to watch, so its an extra level of entertainment).

The fact they have 3 distinctly different modes (sPvP, WvW and PvE) while only having 1 build and a cost for respec is basically just imposing arbitrary inconvenience on players to implement a gold sink. It really offers nothing else.

Everyone who is agaisn't increasing FoV because you don't have the issue, you should count yourself lucky you don't, it hurts.

Nicator, on 29 June 2012 - 05:14 PM, said:

You do realize that allowing players to increase the FOV a few more degrees still won't allow them to see everything behind them, right?  If the game is 70 or 80 right now, then 90 is not going to do much more than slightly increase peripheral vision and make it a more comfortable experience for those bothered by a narrow view. No playstyle is going to be ruined because people can suddenly see slightly more to their left or right. And if it was, it's a playstyle that's being promoted by the limitation of tunnel vision and not player skill. If an entire playstyle revolves around taking advantage of people not being able to effectively see their surroundings then I don't know if it's really a playstyle that should be fostered.

Besides, humans naturally have a FOV of almost 180 and yet in real combat situations flanking and other such maneuvers still occur and are often very effective.

Wow, it seems that anything can be turned into an elitist vs. carebear debate these days.

Stop derailing the topic. FoV is a valid concern for people suffering it. It is also a pretty standard feature in good games. This is not a single player game where players can go into their .ini files to change the setting, or key in a `console command or people can make a mod for, Anet needs to sort this out and not end up like Mass Effect 3 where players have to worry about being banned for modding the game so they won't puke after playing it a while.

I am not a person to care about the way dyes work (will likely never use them), but I am curious how this decision got past the "is this fun?" test that Anet claimed they put everything through.

Havoc, on 24 June 2012 - 10:55 AM, said:

Sorry, but you're incorrect. Look at the paragraph that I responded to. If I don't buy from the cash shop I am suddenly riding on the backs of others? That is F2P mentality. I paid $70 for the game, I'm not riding on anyone's back.

Havoc, on 24 June 2012 - 10:55 AM, said:

A business making money is one thing, a business making money by engineering exploitative techniques is another. Business is not about making all the money you can at all costs, including crippling products to do it. In fact, this business model is so questionable that there are many countries now debating legislation around it. Guess it must be really good business for this to be on the table. Yes, profit is important, but American companies in particular have clearly lost sight when it has become about profit at all costs - to employees, morals, ethics and customers. At the end of a year, if you can manage to provide for your customers and pull a 20% net profit - is 30% any better? Your in the black.. period. I'd rather see a business do the former and please their customers than do the latter and piss a whole bunch of them off.

Lastly, I own a business, and have for many years. Though it isn't a game company, I've managed to provide for my family and a couple of hundreds of others as well. I've built this business successfully from listening to our customers and providing them with a superior flat-rate pricing model versus the competition (which in the OSR market has traditionally been about nickel-and-diming businesses which they are all tired of - sound familiar?).

Business 101: When customers are willing to pay for a product or service in a certain manner and you can provide this in that manner without incurring extra costs for your business you do it. Otherwise you are being foolish, and YES they are being greedy. For ArenaNet, for example, to go full account unlock non-RNG would please more customers - those that don't like the way it is now and those that don't care either way. Yet they continue to push forward with a controversial method, which is not smart business.

Case in point: It costs maybe $0.05 actual to program RGB setting for a dye. They can sell each of these for $0.30 and make a heck of a profit (500% markup). Instead, we go RNG and make them character locked so we can sell this same item multiple times over even though the cost hasn't changed. It's plain greed and it's plain BS. After all why have 500% margin when you can have 5000%. Please, please enlighten me as to how this is even considered sane business? Five-hundred percent isn't enough? We have to resort to crippled game mechanics and RNG lotteries because we want a 5000% return instead? Secondly, we have costumes at $7.00 in GW1. If you have seven characters, that is roughly $1.00 a character. In GW2 they are now $8.00 PER CHARACTER! Yes, you can swap the item with another character but you still only get one. Please tell me how this massive price increase from one game to the next makes any sense at all.

Sorry you don't like my viewpoint, but being that I am both a customer and do own a successful business I will stick with my opinions. ArenaNet is completely ignoring the negativity around this issue and there is no reason for them to do so. It simply tarnishes many customers view of the company overall. Lastly, I have not attacked anyone who supports the current viewpoint - that's anyone's right as a customer and I will not begrudge anyone that.

Havoc, on 23 June 2012 - 10:42 PM, said:

Amazing how people are willing to forget so quick that this is NOT a F2P game. Every single person playing has PAID for the game. So no one is getting a free ride. It dumbfounds me how much they have trained people to just part with their money so easily in this industry.

ArenaNet themselves have stated they can make a profit and run servers on just the sale of boxed games alone. The store is just for extra profit and NOT needed at all for content production. This is about making as much money as possible from an existing player base, don't be fooled into thinking the store in needed to keep the lights on.

Secondly, I am NOT against the cash shop - I am against character bound, RNG items which I see no value in whatsoever. Why would I spend money on something that I feel has no value? As I have stated on the official beta forums (along with many, many, many others), with account bound and non-RNG items I will happily spend money.

The fools in all of this are ArenaNet. As a business, when customers are telling you they WANT to spend money and HOW they would like to and you are doing anything but what they are asking for, your being foolish. Secondly, character bound, RNG items have not been overly successful in other western markets (ala LOTRO and Champions Online) so why does ArenaNet think they are going to be the exception? What was Einstein's definition of insanity again?

Havoc, on 23 June 2012 - 04:13 PM, said:

At the end of the day though, it is not whether ArenaNet has a good dye system or not. It is whether the current system will sell more dyes thorough the cash shop or not. Character bound and RNG, I am betting not. But it will always remain to be seen. What matters to me personally though is that the current system will save me a ton of cash because with the current system, and more importantly ArenaNet's attitude about the whole thing, it will be a cold day in hell before I spend a single red cent in the store beyond content updates.

Mini-Pets is a fun addition to the game, and the whole thing about it being cash-shop only is pretty stupid imho. Soon, Arenanet will move everything to cash-shop only, they will de-rail the game from the community that built the hype and crowd up. Mini-pets are cash-shop only? What kind of joke is that?

Arenanet, please... I beg of you

No it is a different game. Just the same history and world.

Actually the more I have pondered this the more I realize I am okay with it. ArenaNet has done me a favor and saved me hundreds that I would have plunked down in the cash shop otherwise. Why? Because I won't spend so much as a penny in cash shops for anything character bound nor RNG based.

So, now I will have to figure which four characters I want to play (since the fifth will have to be dedicated to being a mule to get around the pathetic amount of bank storage we have), as I want be purchasing any extra character slots. I will live with whatever dyes drop, as I won't purchase a single one. I will find a set with the stats I need and learn to live with it, since I won't purchase any trans stones. If ArenaNet launches with character bound RNG, and realizes at a later date that sales weren't what they thought and they go to account bound, I still won't purchase anything as they will have already proven they could care less what players think. I am so sick of this attitude permeating the gaming industry today overall. It's just sickening.

Perhaps players in Korea will make up for the lack of western market purchases with these changes.

ArenaNet has lost a lot of credibility in my eyes. While they have done a fantastic job on the base game - their approach and attitude towards the cash shop at this early stage now has them on my caution radar (i.e., I don't trust them anymore and everything will be looked at with a degree of caution). I will play the game and if I feel they move the cash shop in a direction similar to other F2Ps, in particular Turbine, I will simply move on. No big deal at this point anymore for me. At this point, I feel this game only has 18-24 months before the "lure of the store" will put ArenaNet is the same exalted company as Turbine today.

It's sad really. It seems the whole VG industry is currently enamored with exploitative business models that want to nickel-and-dime customers rather than providing the value in the box and making money that way. Here I was hopeful that ArenaNet was different, but it turns out in the end that they really aren't.

I keep thinking back to the GW2 Manifesto video and the lines:

"If you hate MMOs you'll really want to check out GW2."

"I unocked a dye, I unlocked a dye again, HEY I unlocked a dye again, that's great - we just don't want players to grind in GW2, no-one enjoys that, no-one finds that fun." (Changed from the well known sword quote).

It's a real shame ArenaNet has double standards between their departments. Unlocking on a per character basis, randomly generated from 400 colours, untradable and allowing for duplicates - that's not a boring grind at all, it's a fun and exciting innovation that's totally new to the MMO genre.

What they are doing with the cash shop, specifically with dyes and the grind to obtain them, really reminds of the things I hate about MMOs. They talk so much about the things MMOs do to trick or force you into running that monthly treadmill and paying that monthly fee, but they are just as bad if not worse in the ways they are not approaching how to get players to use the cash shop, lowering the value of things from the shop and severely crippling the in-game ways of obtaining them to make the cash shop the most reasonable option to counteract the grind they've built into it (just like a free Korean MMO only we pay for GW2). One of the worst things about it is they are targetting or exploiting niche communities. Rather than WoW which has everyone equally pay for the game, the people who care most about features like armour dyes or playing lots of alts are the ones who are going to subsidise everyone else's play experience. Its the features that effect them most (and certainly more than it impacts on PvP players or casuals who don't care about dyes and only have one main) that are being targetted by the cash shop. I roll my eyes when I see ArenaNet bash subscription games for forgoing good game design with integrity to instead deliberatly put unfun and grindy things in the game in an attempt to keep the monthly fees rolling in - GW is forgoing good game design and integrity to herd people who care about great features or systems in the game into forking out for the cash shop to access them. Rather than creating good, desirable or convenient items which make players feel like they are being rewarded for paying for them (the BMP from GW1, mounts in WoW, costumes in GW1) they are taking features in the bare bones game and making them incredibly inconvenient to access to force a cash shop participation. They aren't selling convenience, they are creating inconvenience (and going to a lot of effort to do so) to force a cash shop purchase (just like insanely grindy experience rates in F2P games which force exp scroll purchases).

I really feel like these changes to dyes and the cash shop in general show case the worst MMOs have to offer players and are dissapointing trends considering how the rest of GW2 has been shaping up. It's also really dissapointing to see them say they aren't even considering changing it back (given the outcry) while also claiming to listen to fans. To take it off the table completely (especially after going back on a promise) doesn't sound like they particularly care about what the fans have to say.

''giving a feeling for progression and distinction'' CC quote.

This is main reason i have a ichy feeling about new dye system.  Feels a bit dishonest to use it as argument.
That feeling comes from dungeons, getting that special skin armor looks (which you want to dye, lol). It comes from the achievements also. It will not come from a bit darker green. GW2 is also designed to encourage alts, experience the story/game again with new plots and DE.

If i look at different forum and reactions there is a large group of players that one way or another dont really care about dye system.
A smaller group do care and like the account based.
An even smaller group (significant) is in extasy mood.. yeah finally i have a character bound dye system and can show off my exlusive slightly more pinkish armor. I am the coolest dude around....

Guild wars has a more adult playerbase Arenanet. Listen to your playerbase.